On the Frontlines of Development: Recruiting for the World’s Toughest Jobs

Last year a convoy of employees and consultants for Chemonics was ambushed and murdered in Afghanistan, one of the worst incidents of violence in the field of international development. The year before a young woman who was a Presidential Management Fellow at USAID was shot in the eye in Sudan while on a routine mission. Blackwater, one of the biggest contractors working in Iraq, reports more than 100 attacks and murders of its staff. Although a lack of systematic data collection means estimates on the number of aid workers and consultants killed in Iraq and Afghanistan must be culled from news reports, there is little doubt that development professionals are working in some of the most dangerous areas of the world. Yet recruiters are able to find people to go to the field. Young professionals hoping to begin a career are queuing up to be included in the pool of qualified professionals from which international aid and development organizations draw. And though finding senior level management has proven more challenging because there are fewer experienced professionals but high demand. How do recruiters for development and humanitarian relief organizations manage to recruit talented professionals for positions in the most inhospitable places, where war, violence, famine, and natural disasters are just part of a day’s work? For the past few years the army has struggled to meet its recruiting goals as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to deplete the ranks of soldiers, leading the army to lower its basic requirements in order to entice people to go to these most dangerous places on earth. Yet even as the military has struggled to find people to go to violent and dangerous conflict zones, international development and humanitarian assistance organizations have had little difficulty-recruiting people for different work in the same locations. The challenge is competing for the available ones with experience who not already on a project. At first glance it might appear that these civil society organizations would have difficulty finding people willing to go to conflict and post-conflict zones. But with attractive salaries, comprehensive benefits, generous leave, and most importantly, a mission people believe in, they have had little difficulty attracting people. One applicant for a position with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Afghanistan said he competed against more than 110 people for the chance to work on a provincial reconstruction team. A recruiter for Iraq said she had hundreds of applicants. And according to USAID the agency has met its direct hire goals for critical priority countries for the past four years, not a small fete given the dangers of working in Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. International development and humanitarian work was once the purview of a select group of rugged, single men who typically worked for one organization and traversed the globe as a way of life. “They used to be called cowboys,” recalled Laura Lea Clinton, Manager of Global Talent Acquisition for CARE, whereas today diversity is increasingly important as the field becomes more professional and people make life choices that take them from one organization to another. She offered the example of one of CARE’s country directors who could not take his family to his post so they lived in a nearby country. While this might work for him of the career side of life, she said, it was not sustainable. With the professionalization of the field over the past decade, the nature of the work and of the people has shifted. International development professionals today are younger, more likely to have families, and less likely to remain with the same organization according to interviews with recruitment managers at several firms and non-profit organizations that work in the field. More people in this line of work have Master’s degrees and new academic programs are sprouting up throughout the country that focus on international development and humanitarian work. “It does seem to be very competitive and up and coming field,” according to Kate Staff, Acting Human Resources Officer for the International Rescue Committee. “More people are getting masters and higher education, trying to break into the field, and in turn the field is more competitive than maybe ten years ago when you didn’t need that.” A survey of job postings supports the perception that Masters degrees are now a minimum requirement for many positions. Yet the most important qualification across the board was fieldwork experience. “We want to see that people have lived and worked in these types of environments,” said Ms. Staff. These environments are often hostile and always lack the comforts of home. But since the field has grown exponentially over the past decade or two, there is a dearth of experienced development professionals with the requisite twenty years of experience often required for senior level management positions. Those with fieldwork experience are thus in high demand. The challenge, especially at the senior level, is finding experienced people who are available. Thus while it has been relatively easy to recruit for these positions, the pool of qualified applicants from which to draw is limited since most organizations require both technical expertise and previous experience in the field. Stephen Horblitt, director of external relations for Creative Associates International, Inc., said organizations in this field are often competing with each other because they are drawing on the same pool of potential candidates with the requisite technical skills and emotional capability to work in difficult areas. This pool has become smaller, he said in an interview, because the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and humanitarian disasters like Sudan and Indonesia mean that many potential candidates are already in the field. The relatively recent professionalization of the field also means that there is not a large cadre of older, experienced managers to draw on. “The applicant pool isn’t as large as it needs to be,” said Ms. Staff, adding that there is definitely competition, especially at the higher level positions that require technical expertise. Since qualified people with experience are not always available, recruiters must cultivate relationships with them, staying in touch over months and years so that when they become available for a project the recruiter will know. “The good candidates with experience are not as available,” said Wendy Bradford, human resources manager at CAII. She said it is not too difficult to find those people but that the issue is availability. “It’s often a timing factor so we have to keep up with that person to maintain a relationship and be able to target them when they become available.” Like nearly all organizations working in this field, CAII recruits via its website and advertises its positions online through targeted sites like ReliefWeb and Development Executive Group. But the vast majority of their recruits come from their internal networks. Most organizations have created internal recruiting databases that use key words to filter through thousands of résumés and narrow down the pool of qualified applicants. The pool is also limited by the requirement of granting agencies like USAID, which must vet and approve all hires by subcontractors. From the USAID employee’s perspective, the pool is getting smaller and smaller because people are already serving and so it is getting harder to fill open posts. Furthermore, he said, everyone is drawing from the pretty much the same pool making competition fierce. They must promote financial incentives and career benefits along with the sense of accomplishment that comes from being effective and doing good work. He said that almost to a person, those who have served in Iraq said they felt fulfilled and were accomplishing things. “They don’t curtail, they find what they’re doing to be productive and rewarding and stay for the full assignment,” he remarked. Organizations find they must compete to offer higher salaries, more attractive leave, and more comprehensive benefits packages to entice the senior level people with the requisite experience, skills and emotional maturity to work for their firm and a competitor. Family has also become more important over the last several years with a changing workforce that does not want to be separated from spouses and children for long periods of time. So some organizations have worked with employees to redefine unaccompanied posts as accompanied ones or to place family in more stable, neighboring countries. As senior human resources manager for CHF International, Robin Jaffe is responsible for recruiting for Iraq. Despite continued bloodshed and rising sectarian violence, the positions attract hundreds of applicants. Ms. Jaffe said she has two positions open in Iraq, one of which has 90 applicants. She has successfully recruited for Iraq despite the longer rotations because many employees are able to bring their families with them. Staff in Iraq go in and out but are based in Amman, Jordan, which means CHF is able to offer them things other organizations can not, like bringing family with them so can see them every couple of weeks, said Ms. Jaffe. Recruiters say that immediately after the war the number of people interested in Iraq outstripped the supply of jobs as salaries and allowances three times the normal amount tempted people to leave the comforts of home for the deserts of the Middle East. But then the insurgency started to gain momentum, and in August 2003 a truck bomb decimated the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and it became more difficult to recruit for positions there. Though many people do apply for positions there, it became more difficult to attract the seasoned professional who likely has a family and does not want to take the risk. Many younger professionals, on the other hand, seem to see Iraq and Afganistan as posts where they can cut their teeth and gain the fieldwork experience necessary to advance in their career. Thus many applicants lack the desired skills and experience whereas the recruiters are often unwilling to hire someone without it. Despite rampant violence, challenging living conditions, and long stints away from hearth and home, more and more people want to take up the challenge, making the recruiters’ work easier. Even tragic events like the Chemonics killings did not seem to affect recruitment. Ultimately it is not the high salaries or benefits that draw talented, dedicated people to the field. As Ms. Bradford put it in a sentiment echoed by many other recruiters, people who do development know the risks and challenges and love it. The work is about the mission. That is why these organizations have little trouble recruiting and are able to draw on an ever-growing pool of applicants who are eagerly seeking to break into international development and humanitarian work. Read more career advice articles.